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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
January 2011

Vol. 16, No. 4 Week of January 23, 2011

Trans-Alaska oil pipeline up and running

With bypass piping in place, flow began again Jan. 17 after Jan. 8 leak caused first shutdown, followed by second to install bypass

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

The trans-Alaska oil pipeline began moving North Slope crude oil again the morning of Jan. 17, following the second shutdown within a week — this to install bypass piping needed to move oil around the site of the spill discovered Jan. 8.

By Jan. 18, North Slope producers were providing 525,000 barrels per day to Pump Station 1 and storage tanks at the pump station had stabilized at 11.5 feet with throughput to the pipeline matching the producers input.

Production prior to the Jan. 8 shutdown was more than 630,000 bpd.

The unified command for the incident (the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.) said that bypass design, fabrication and installation was a complex project that normally would have involved months of planning and preparation.

“Crews were able to safely complete the work in a short time frame, under challenging and harsh winter weather conditions,” the unified command said Jan. 17 after the work was completed.

At peak, more than 600 people workers were involved, 375 of them at Pump Station 1, on tasks ranging from vacuuming up crude oil to installing the bypass piping. There was also work elsewhere on the line, some of it in preparation in case a cold restart was required. Cold restart piping was assembled at Pump Stations 3, 5, 7 and 9; that piping would only be tied into the pump stations’ piping if a cold restart was implemented, which did not occur.

The line was shut down Jan. 8 after crude oil was found in the basement of the booster pump building at Pump Station 1 and producers were cut back to 5 percent of normal production.

Vacuum trucks removed the oil, work began on a 157-foot 24-inch bypass line, with fabrication work in Fairbanks and on the North Slope, and an 800-gallon containment vault was installed in the booster pump building.

A temporary restart of the line was authorized by the unified command Jan. 11.

Temperature issues

The temporary restart was necessary because of winter conditions and the need to increase temperatures in both the tanks at Pump Station 1 and in the pipeline, where wax could accumulate or water in the oil could freeze. The restart also allowed the flowing oil to move a cleaning pig from between Mileposts 419 and 420 to Pump Station 8. The unified command said the pig could affect pump station equipment if left in the pipeline too long in cold temperatures. The restart allowed crews to trap the pig between two values in the mainline at Pump Station 8 on Jan. 13; crude oil was routed around the trapped pig through bypass piping.

The southern pig reached the Valdez Marine Terminal Jan. 12.

The temporary restart helped avoid having to do a more complex cold restart and helped mitigate freeze concerns on the North Slope.

The second shutdown, for connection of the bypass piping, began just after midnight Jan. 15; flow resumed the morning of Jan. 17. Producers were cut back to 24 percent of normal production; production levels were dropped to 12 percent before flow resumed and storage tanks at Pump Station 1 reached the 36-foot level; the normal maximum operating level is 42 feet.

Congressional concern

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, the ranking member on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, requested a full review of the pipeline last year. That review is expected to be completed this spring.

Among areas the senator listed for review were: remote gate valves on the pipeline; pump station relief tank capacity; the system to monitor pipeline pressures; reliability of pipeline control systems; leak detection along the pipeline; and power generation, distribution and backup.

“Last year I asked Alyeska to begin a thorough safety review of TAPS, and this is precisely the sort of event that such a review will help start against,” Murkowski said in a Jan. 9 statement.

She said she remains “confident in the ability of Alaskans to continue to provide the nation with safe and reliable supplies of domestic energy.”

U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, has requested that the Senate Commerce Committee host a hearing on issues related to the trans-Alaska oil pipeline in March or April. In a letter to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Begich said Alyeska would issue a report in a few weeks “on the technical and economic challenges of operating the pipeline as production and throughput continue to decrease.”

Begich said in a statement that a congressional hearing would allow Alyeska to discuss its plans to overcome future operational challenges.

“As we look to the future of TAPS, we know we have to get more oil in the pipeline, and I will continue to work for increased production of Alaska’s oil and gas resources,” he said.

“We have enormous potential in our Arctic waters and in the NPR-A, and I will continue to push the Obama Administration to let development move forward.”






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